


October 29th - Autumn Goodness

by omgericzimmermann (HMSLusitania)



Series: 13 Days of Halloween [11]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: 13 Days of Halloween, M/M, and pumpkin flavored everything, and some pimms snogging, disgustingly fluffy autumn things, the vampire AU, there's a bat named marble cake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-27 14:24:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8404990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HMSLusitania/pseuds/omgericzimmermann
Summary: The third part of the Vampire trilogy. Day 11 of the 13 Days of Halloween





	

**Author's Note:**

> Only two more days! Eek!

Kent loved Massachusetts in the fall.

He loved the way the trees turned orange, the way crisp chill clung to the air, the curtains of mist that blanketed the trees around their property. He loved the way the dew caught on the spider webs that slung between tall blades of grass and along their fence.

And he loved Halloween, because it was the one day a year where he and Bitty – and any of the kids who happened to be in town – could really be themselves. They could show their fangs when they smiled, and they could dig up the opera capes they’d worn to the Paris Opera in the 19th century, and they could go full stereotypical vampire as much as they wanted. And it was the housewives of their county, the ones who went to the country club together, the ones who got a little tipsy before taking their kids out trick-or-treating, who would be the ones to think to themselves that perhaps…perhaps there was something not quite right about the Parsons at the edge of town, but they could never put it together.

That fall was different.

That fall was full of all the things it was supposed to be – Bitty going overboard with pumpkin flavoured everything in the kitchen, the kids turning up unannounced with a new pet for them, the spiders being forcibly evicted from the house by a cleaning potion Bitty bought from a witch in Marblehead. But it was necessarily different, since Jack was there.

They had to buy a bigger bed when they got back from Venice, and it took Jack a few months to fully transition to living in Massachusetts with them instead of in Quebec near his parents. Kent and Bitty had only got the summary of Jack’s fight with his parents about not wanting to be a vampire hunter anymore. Apparently it had ended with Jack informing them that if they kept up their ways – since most vampires didn’t kill people or even drink their blood without their consent – someday his parents would go hunting for a vampire and find out it was Jack. Jack hadn’t stuck around to see how they took that news.

“You don’t do things by halves, do you?” Kent asked while Jack relayed this story to them in the kitchen of their house. Bitty was baking – and had promised to someday give Jack the entire extended version of the way baking had changed in North America thanks to the advent of global trade and easier access to ingredients.

“They called me Jack 110% Zimmermann most of the time I was growing up,” Jack said.

“And do you really want to be a vampire?” Bitty asked, dipping his spoon into the pumpkin pudding he was making and offering it to first Kent, then Jack for feedback.

“Not yet,” Jack said. He shrugged. “I always thought thirty-three was a fun number.”

“Neither of us would know,” Kent replied.

“My younger man,” Bitty cooed in his most chirpy of voices, kissing the corner of Kent’s mouth and running back to the stove before Kent could swat at him or the pudding could burn.

Jack raised his eyebrows.

“I was twenty-six when I got turned,” Kent explained. He frowned at the back of Bitty’s head. “I was still born six years before you were!”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night, sugar,” Bitty replied.

“How old were your kids?” Jack asked.

“Oh, well Adam was twenty-five when I turned him,” Kent said, and automatically he was back in Prague at the beginning of the eighteenth century where he’d found Adam, his glasses broken, half dead at the edges of the Jewish cemetery. From what Kent remembered, Adam had been there burying his human father. “And so is his husband Justin.”

“B, my older son,” Bitty said, and Kent tried to restrain his eye-roll. Jack caught it anyway. Kent didn’t know _what_ he was supposed to have done to Beaufort back when he and Bitty first got married, but even though Adam definitely considered Bitty his other parent and even though Bitty’s other son Derek considered Kent his father, Beaufort point blank refused.

“He was twenty-four,” Bitty said. “And his wife Larissa was 22.”

“Derek’s the oldest,” Kent continued. “He’s 27. Will’s 22 as well.”

“Their son, Tony, is 21,” Bitty said.

“Camilla was 24 and March was 22,” Kent continued. “March’s wife, April, was 25.”

“And Chris, our youngest, was only 21, poor thing,” Bitty finished. “Caitlin’s 25.”

Kent watched Jack’s face for some sign that this was freaking him out. He’d been taking it remarkably well, and the lecherous part of Kent’s brain wondered if he was taking this so well because he…took it…so well.

“Why are you smirking like that?” Jack asked, eying Kent suspiciously.

“This is just my face,” Kent said.

“His bottom lip is crooked,” Bitty supplied. “It’s why he always looks like he’s plotting something.”

“No, no he wants something,” Jack said, narrowing his pretty blue eyes at Kent. “He popped a fang at me.”

Kent ran his tongue over the errant fang and let his eyes rake over Jack’s body. Absently he wondered if it was bad form to be eyefucking their boyfriend while his husband was occupied with cooking. But their boyfriend really liked being bitten. Kent wondered half the time if it was because he had spent so much of his life – the entire thing until the previous fall – fearing vampires and so it was something wonderfully thrilling and dangerous.

“We’ll wait for you to finish your pudding, babe,” Kent promised.

“Damn right you will,” Bitty replied.

Jack and Kent both laughed, and as soon as Bitty’s pudding was in the fridge, they retired to the bedroom.

The rest of October went as October always did. Jack, they discovered, liked to get up early and go for runs, which made both Kent and Bitty nauseous to think about, but they didn’t stop him. He always came back with his heart racing and sweaty and apparently human partners found this gross, but for Bitty and Kent, who were well aware of pheromones and how they smelled, it was like Jack was inviting them to a meal every time he came home after exercising.

“But doesn’t the sweat taste bad?” Jack asked in confusion one morning while Kent gently nibbled on his collarbone.

“Only if you’ve been eating a lot of garlic,” Bitty replied, tracing the lines of Jack’s stomach muscles with his finger.

It was almost Halloween when Jack came back upstairs after his morning run looking sort of dazed, like he’d been hit over the head with something. Kent was ready to be concerned, but he held up his hand to reveal a small bat hanging from his finger.

“Adam’s downstairs?” Jack said.

“And who’s this?” Kent asked, figuring he should probably put underwear on if Adam was in their house since no one ever wanted to catch sight of their dad naked.

“He handed it to me?” Jack said, the small bat still hanging from his finger. “He said it was a badger bat.”

“It’s so cute,” Kent said, taking in the stripes on its fur.

“You guys can’t turn into bats right? That is a myth isn’t it?” Jack asked.

“Of course it’s a myth,” Bitty said dismissively.

“I mean, my great-grandfather was a bit of a special case,” Kent said. He’d only met Dracula once before he died, but considering Kent, like the rest of Dracula’s descendants, couldn’t shapeshift either, he had been quickly dismissed.

“Your great-grandfather,” Jack repeated, letting Kent take the small bat from him.

“Dracula,” Bitty supplied, brushing the bat’s head with his finger. “He looks like marble cake. That’s what we’ll call him! Marble Cake!”

Kent grinned and let Bitty take their new pet.

“Hopefully he and Pumpkin Pie will get along,” Kent said.

Jack had dropped to a seated position on the end of the bed, now looking even more like he’d been clubbed over the head.

“Your great-grandfather was Dracula, your grandmother is Erzsébet Báthory, and you have multiple pet bats,” Jack listed.

“Yes,” Kent agreed. He glanced at Bitty, who had no suggestions for Jack’s current state.

“I’m gonna go make sure Adam and Justin haven’t entirely emptied our fridge,” Bitty said, kissing Kent on the cheek and leaving the room.

“Traitor,” Kent called after him.

“It’s not my family that’s weird and stereotypical at the same time!” Bitty called back.

“Is too,” Kent muttered, since they _were_ family, absolutely. But Bitty didn’t have Dracula’s blood in his veins except the stuff he’d borrowed from Kent.

Kent looked back at Jack, who still looked a little like he was falling apart. Kent sighed and put his knees on either side of Jack’s hips, effectively trapping him on the end of the bed. Jack’s hands went to his waist automatically.

“Yes, Dracula turned Erzsébet Báthory in 1589, and she made a whole bunch of vampires very quickly, mostly women, mostly by accident, and one of them turned me in 1600,” Kent listed. Jack swallowed nervously. “Dracula is very dead, and has been since 1891, and Granny never leaves Romania.”

Jack nodded. “Okay,” he said. “But you have pet bats.”

Kent snorted and kissed him quickly. It stopped being a quick kiss when Jack’s tongue slipped into Kent’s mouth and caught on one of his fangs. Kent didn’t want to be too much of a vampire about it, but he really liked the way Jack tasted. He’d miss it once Jack was one of them permanently, but nowhere near enough to justify not turning him.

He couldn’t refrain from mentioning it though.

“God you taste so good,” Kent mumbled.

“Really?” Jack asked. “It doesn’t just taste like iron?”

“God no,” Kent said, peppering small kisses across Jack’s face. He was so warm it made Kent shiver. It was so novel for him to be small, too. Since he’d only been with Bitty – with occasional guest appearances – for several centuries, it was entirely new for him to not be the biggest. He kind of liked it. But despite all that, he was a little worried about bringing Jack into their lives permanently, because no matter how much he liked Jack, he was always going to love Bitty more. And Bitty was always going to love him more. But maybe it didn’t matter. Vampires mated for life and he and Bitty were mates. Kent didn’t know if that bond could expand to hold a third person, but he knew both he and Bitty were committed to trying and that was a good 70% of the battle.

“Come on, we should go downstairs and see what other mischief Adam brought with him,” Kent suggested, climbing off Jack’s lap.

“He brought more mischief than a pet bat?” Jack asked, following Kent into the kitchen.

“Hey Dad,” Adam said with an easiness that betrayed the fact he was up to something. “Bits said you named the new one Marble Cake?”

“Yeah,” Kent agreed. “Where is he?”

“Marble Cake? Hanging from the kitchen chandelier,” Adam said, pointing up. Kent looked up to discover his new pet bat was indeed hanging from the chandelier, its wings wrapped around itself.

“Bitty,” Kent clarified. “Where’s Bitty?”

Just then Bitty came in from the back porch carrying a cardboard box. His eyes were misty and there was tiny squeaking coming from the box. Wary, Kent stepped forward. The box was full of kittens.

“Um, yeah, so the shelter that Cait runs ended up with a Halloween litter, and since most of them are black cats, they wanted to get them into a home,” Adam said. “I kinda volunteered you guys. Happy your-boyfriend-moved-in-housewarming present! Gotta go!”

Kent gaped at his retreating back while Adam bounded out the door with vampire speed and disappeared back to his car. He and Justin insisted on living in Boston proper, which Kent didn’t understand, but he wasn’t going to fight.

“He brought us a box of kittens,” Bitty said, setting the box on the table and peering down at them.

“Shouldn’t animals hate you guys?” Jack asked, looking over the edge. One kitten, black with shockingly blue eyes, gnawed on the finger he offered.

“Cats and bats don’t,” Kent said. “They like our kind a lot. I think it’s because we have a very similar social structure to cats.”

“Vampire clans are--” Jack started.

“Colonies,” Kent and Bitty corrected in unison.

“Vampires have colonies,” Kent said. “Just like cats.”

“Oh,” Jack said.

Kent scooped a couple kittens out of the box and they cuddled right up to the crook of his neck.

“Kenny loves cats,” Bitty said, leaning against Jack and resting a hand on his phenomenal ass. “More than most people.”

“Hey,” Kent protested, albeit half-heartedly. “I love you two a whole damn lot more than I love cats.”

Bitty opened his mouth to contradict him but Kent brandished a squeaking orange and white kitten at him.

“We will not speak of the Whitby Incident of 1795,” Kent said. Bitty snorted and hid the laugh in Jack’s ribs. Jack, of course, just looked confused.

“So, um, what do you guys do for Halloween?” Jack asked.

By the time the day itself rolled around, they had fixed Jack up with a proper vampire costume. With his dark hair and his cheekbones, he looked so perfectly like a vampire that it made Kent shiver a little while he stood in the living room with his opera cape and his fake fangs. They were on their way to the fall festival in their town square, so obviously they had to get dressed up. Bobbing for apples was Bitty’s speciality, and he used his fangs to cheat, but Kent had never called him on it. Kent was in it for the apple cider and the chocolate and the hayrides. But Bitty hated hayrides because he hated horses ever since the incident in Paris in 1867, so Kent had always gone alone.

“Do you like horses?” Kent asked as the three of them walked to the town centre. There were booths set up everywhere with jack-o-lanterns, and hay bales, and the inn had been converted to a haunted house. There was a corn maze, there were stalls selling caramel apples and apple cider and caramel corn, three of Kent’s favourite things, even if he did prefer Bitty’s versions. There was a photo booth, there was apple bobbing, and of course, the hayrides.

“I’m indifferent to them,” Jack said. “Why?”

“How do you feel about haunted houses?” Kent asked.

“Actual haunted houses or Halloween versions?” Jack replied.

“The Halloween version,” Kent said while Bitty looked patiently annoyed. Bitty loved haunted houses. Kent couldn’t stand them.

“I love them,” Jack said. “And I love hayrides. Why?”

“Because I like haunted houses and Kenny likes hayrides but we both hate the other,” Bitty explained. He grinned, his fangs flashing. “Looks like neither of us have to go alone this year, honey.”

Kent smiled and kissed Bitty soundly. He made to kiss Jack as well, but Jack nodded at their nearest neighbours, who already thought they were suspicious enough. Kent pouted, but didn’t argue.

“How about you go get your apple treats to stock up for the hayride, and Jack and I will do the haunted house, and I’ll bob for apples while you’re on the ride,” Bitty suggested. Kent frowned. “What?”

“I like watching you win,” Kent said. Bitty beamed at him, kissed him quickly, and then pulled Jack off to the haunted inn. Kent sighed dramatically to no one in particular and took himself off to the food vendor.

“You gonna buy us out of the chocolate caramel popcorn balls this year again Mr Parson?” the weedy fifteen year old kid asked. He was dressed up like a video game character from a game Kent didn’t know, and had been tending the booth since he was thirteen. His parents owned the shop that put it on, and well, it was a very small town.

“You are absolutely correct, Billy,” Kent said. “And I found someone to share them with this year.”

“Really? But Bitty refuses to eat our popcorn balls,” Billy said. Kent snorted at the idea of everyone in town knowing his husband’s dietary snobbery, but didn’t comment. Kent paid for his treats, as well as three caramel apples because even Bitty would eat those, and turned, only to find himself face to face with the mayor.

“Mr Mayor,” Kent said, taking a bite of his popcorn ball.

“Mr Parson,” the mayor said, tugging on the lapels of his barbershop quartet costume. Kent was sure the rest of the municipal government made up the other three. “A word?”

Kent nodded and followed him to the back of the gazebo.

The mayor pulled off his straw boater hat and turned it in his hands like he was trying to figure out what to say.

“Now, you and your…your husband have lived in our town for – well, I’m not actually sure how long,” the mayor said.

 _One hundred and thirty eight years_ , Kent supplied mentally. He didn’t share that.

“And well, the thing is, I know you’ve done what you could to cultivate some…air of mystery about yourselves,” the mayor continued. Kent had absolutely no idea where this conversation was going, but he wasn’t sure he liked it. It felt a bit like they were about to get reprimanded for not being appropriately civic minded. “But the thing is…everyone in town knows.”

“Knows we’re gay?” Kent asked, letting his eyebrows drift to his hairline. “I’m sorry, sir, but I thought we made that pretty clear when we, you know, introduced ourselves as Bitty and Kent Parson, husband and husband.”

The mayor took a deep breath like he was steeling himself.

“We know you’re…among the undead,” the mayor said. “That you’re vampires.”

Kent didn’t mean to choke on his popcorn or spit it out at the mayor, but it happened anyway.

“Excuse me?” Kent asked.

“Mr Parson, you’re eating the stickiest popcorn balls ever made by man and your ‘costume’ fangs haven’t come out yet,” the mayor said. “I don’t know how old you are--”

“Four hundred and forty,” Kent said, unable to help himself. He was in too much shock.

The mayor paled, but bounced back fairly quickly.

“And the other Mr Parson?” the mayor asked.

“Four hundred and thirty five,” Kent said.

“And your new paramour?” the mayor asked. “The dark haired man who makes people swoon just by walking past?”

Kent opened his mouth to contradict that, but he had seen Susie Fitzsimmons swoon over Jack’s ass at the grocery store the other day.

“He’s, uh, 27,” Kent said.

“He’s human?” the mayor asked, eyes wide.

“For the time being,” Kent said.

The mayor nodded, slowly. “In the interest of legality, when you make someone a vampire, do you have to kill them?”

Kent blinked. This was possibly the strangest conversation he’d ever had.

“Uh, well, they stop being human, but they also live forever,” Kent said. “Dead is a relative term.”

The mayor nodded. “We just, decided as a town, that perhaps you and your husband would be…more comfortable if you knew you could be yourselves here. And in the spirit of the season, we agreed today would be a good day.”

Kent nodded slowly, and then caught sight of Bitty and Jack coming out of the haunted inn.

“Thank you,” Kent said. “I’ll let Bits know.”

He turned and started to head for his boys, but stopped.

“Oh, and Mr Mayor? My great-grandfather was Dracula.”

The mayor’s eyes looked like they might bug out of his face. Kent smiled, his fangs popping out, and ran off to meet Bitty and Jack.

**Author's Note:**

> General Hauskeeping  
> \- There are only two more days. Tomorrow's prompt is "horror story."  
> \- This concludes the vampire trilogy.  
> 


End file.
